But their unwanted meddling has drawn the wrath of UKIP Students, who said: “The various bureaucracies of Brussels cannot be allowed to wield undue influence on British campuses.”

Eurosceptics have questioned cosy, well-paid, EU-luvvie academics having anything other than self interest at heart.

After all, Britain is the biggest winner from European research funding, raking in around £1.2 billion a year.

Sarah Curtis with Suzanne Evans

19-year-old Sarah Curtis, UKIP students Chairman, scalded the organisation for breaking impartiality: “There is a strange orthodoxy among the academic that political union is a vital necessity to organise cooperation between universities.

“The myth of ‘EU funding’ has been talked about by UKIP on many occasions, and the same reasoning applies to universities. We pay more to the EU than they give us back.

The Middlesex undergrad went on: “We cannot allow British money to be laundered through the EU, and then spent on misleading students by presenting a biased representation of facts.

“We should have a fairer, more positive system, which allows universities to choose students based on potential rather than their passport.”

To learn that one and a half thousand academics around the world are being paid by the EU to promote EU integration is deeply concerning.

Members of Universities UK – representing the heads of 133 institutions – pleaded for an in-vote on Monday as they try to persuade 1.8 million students to back Brussels.

Nottingham grad Elliott Johnson, 21, Political Editor of Conservative Way Forward told The Tab: “I’m not surprised at the university sector’s left wing bias, but it’s not fully indicative of pupils, individual lecturer’s or professionals.

“So I don’t think they can come out saying the complete, whole higher education sector of Britain is in favour of Europe.Within that group there will be a lot of people who feel the other way.”

The ‘Universities for Europe’ campaign was launched on Monday with the conservative-promised in-out referendum looming on the horizon.

Dame Julia Goodfellow, President of Universities UK said: “It is abundantly clear that the UK’s membership of the European Union has an overwhelmingly positive impact on our world-leading universities, enhancing university research and teaching.”